1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to PCR primer sets for detecting severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) virus, a method and a kit for detecting SARS virus.
2. Description of the Related Art
Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) virus is a new type of coronavirus and is designated as SARS-Coronavirus (hereinafter, referred to as “SARS-CoV”) by the World Health Organization (WHO). It is known that SARS-CoV gives rise to severe acute respiratory syndrome. SARS-CoV is a novel RNA virus. It is known that the whole genome sequence of SARS-CoV consists of about 29,730 bp and the genetic makeup is similar to those of other types of coronaviruses.
The WHO reported guidelines for laboratory diagnosis of SARS as follows: (a) antibody test: identification of SARS-CoV antibody in serum after one day, (b) PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) test: identification of SARS-CoV RNA by PCR, and (c) virus separation: separation of SARS-CoV.
In a conventional PCR test, the following six types of primers are used for detection of SARS-CoV:                (1) BNIoutS2: SEQ ID NO: 29 (24mer); BNIoutAs: SEQ ID NO: 30 (21mer), BNIinS: SEQ ID NO: 31 (20mer); BNIinAs: SEQ ID NO: 32 (22mer),        (2) SAR1S: SEQ ID NO: 33 (21mer); SAR1As: SEQ ID NO: 34 (21mer),        (3) Cor-p-F2: SEQ ID NO: 35 (21 mer); Cor-p-R1: SEQ ID NO: 34 (21 mer),        (4) Cor-p-F3: SEQ ID NO: 35 (21mer); Cor-p-R1: SEQ ID NO: 36 (21mer),        (5) COR-1: SEQ ID NO: 37 (26mer); COR-2: SEQ ID NO: 38 (26mer),        (6) HKU (sense): SEQ ID NO: 39 (17mer); HKU (antisense): SEQ ID NO: 40 (16mer).        
Among them, the primers of (1), which were developed by Bernhard-Nocht Institute (BNI, Germany) for diagnosis of SARS generated in early 2003, have been most widely used. However, only a local region, i.e., a polymerase gene region, of the whole genome sequence of about 30 kb of SARS-CoV, is used as a target site of currently known primers. Such a narrow application site may lead to either false negative or false positive results.
In view of these problems, the present inventors found SARS-CoV-specific primers which reduce a likelihood of being determined as false negative or false positive and rapidly detect SARS-CoV in situ after rapid PCR, and completed the present invention.